Radio Tokyo said Kaihyo To had been bombarded by six warships and a submarine. Fluckey was pleased because it described his objective: maximum harassment with minimum force.

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That afternoon they fired a smaller Mark 27 torpedo at a freighter that was nearly overhead, and the torpedo found its way to the ship’s propeller. It was the first time a freighter had ever been sunk by a Mark 27, let alone from the allegedly suicidal range of seventy-five yards. Four down, eleven to go for Fluckey to win his whiskey.

On July 5 they sank another small freighter, and on July 11 they got their seventh vessel, a large diesel sampan, with the five-inch gun. On July 18, using the last of the unreliable Mark 28 torpedoes, the Barb got a frigate, Kaikoban No. 112.

Now it was time for some derring-do that would bring the Barb as much fame as any of its previous kills. On July 20 Fluckey pulled to within one thousand yards of shore in Patience Bay and watched trains all day. He waited for an overcast night, which came on July 23. At midnight, eight saboteurs in two rubber rafts paddled six hundred yards to shore (every single crewman had volunteered) and buried fifty-five pounds of explosives under the track. It was detonated two hours later by a switch triggered by the weight of the train.

“Boom! Wham! What a thrill!” recalled Fluckey in Thunder Below! “The boilers of the engine blew. Engine wreckage flying, flying, flying up some 200 feet, racing ahead of a mushroom of smoke, now white, now black. Sixteen cars piling up, into and over the wall of wreckage in front, rolling off the track in a writhing, twisting maelstrom of Gordian knots.”

Commander Fluckey now had to sink seven vessels in just three days in order to win the whiskey. The torpedoes were gone, but there were some five-inch shells left—and forty-eight rockets.

“Our priority now is Shiritori, where we’ll reconnoiter for a triple rocket massage,” he told his officers. “We’ll rocket Shiritori just after dark, then proceed at flank speed down the coast and rocket Kashiho before dawn. From there we skid across the bay to bombard Chiri. After that I’d like one more crack at luring a single minefield frigate into deep water.”

“Rockets away!” Thirty-six rockets flew toward two factories and Shiritori’s city hall, striking gasoline drums. Fires lit up the night sky. Fluckey invited all hands on deck to enjoy the fireworks before they raced off to their final stop that night.

Two hours later the last dozen rockets blew up more buildings at Kashiho.

Later in the morning they got another sampan, taking a prisoner to obtain information about defenses at their next target, Chiri. On the way into Chiri they got another sampan. They unloaded on Chiri with forty-three five-inch shells; on the way out they got another sampan with the last of the five-inch shells. All that remained were three star shells, which weren’t explosive, but no matter. They fired two into a sampan at the waterline, holing the hull, sinking it, and bringing the tally to six sampans for the day. Fourteen vessels down, one to go.

The Barb received a message from Admiral Lockwood:

fluckey you come home x acknowledge x.

There was no ammunition left except for the 40mm gun and 20mm Oerlikon machine gun. They used the last of the 40mm shells to blow up a lumber mill at Shibetoro, again hitting a fuel tank and causing an inferno. The wind blew the fire onto seventeen sampans, which didn’t count for the bet because they were collateral damage.

Four miles later they came across a trawler. Looking around for something to throw at the trawler, they came up with a crate of rifle grenades. After eighteen lobs, the trawler caught fire but wouldn’t sink. So, finally, Fluckey rammed it with the Barb. “It seemed like driving a car into a burning garage,” he said.

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